


him which smote great kings

by jk_rockin



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Canon-Typical Violence, Faustian Bargain, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 06:32:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6273508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jk_rockin/pseuds/jk_rockin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foggy summons a demon to help him get into Columbia Law. That demon arrives in the body of Matt Murdock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rushing to get this posted- started, anyway- before season 2, I'm actually going to post this chapter by chapter, as opposed to my usual fic dump method, to blackmail myself into finishing it.
> 
> Inspired by [this episode of old-timey radio show Quiet, Please](http://www.quietplease.org/index.php?section=episode&id=98), the three seasons of Supernatural I made it through watching, the plethora of excellent fics in which authors have taken the 'Murdock boys got the Devil in them' thing literally, Meet Joe Black, Good Omens, Bedazzled, my youthful obsession with Paradise Lost, and... idk, being Foggy Nelson trash? I draw from a wide pool, and apparently I really like demons. Who knew.
> 
> Recommended listening includes anything by My Chemical Romance, Brand New, Hozier, Empires (I listened to _Howl_ and the _BANG_ EP on loop multiple times while writing), a bunch of witch house and darkwave (especially VEILS, cathedrals, [this Russian artist whose name I cannot pronounce ](http://radostimoja.tumblr.com/), and Crystal Castles) and Gounod's Faust, if you're fancy. [ETA: I made a [Spotify playlist](https://play.spotify.com/user/jk_rockin/playlist/4ww5W0Lw1dA7ro589WAzwJ?play=true&utm_source=open.spotify.com&utm_medium=open), proving once again that I win at self-indulgence.]
> 
> Title taken from Psalm 136, which the internet assures me is the psalm to read at the crossroads if you want to do deals with devils. For his mercy endureth forever.
> 
> I've made some entirely internet research based decisions about the timeline, because reasons, but I figure if I can write an AU in which Matt is a low-level demonic entity wearing a person suit I can mess with canon chronology a bit. I HAVE NO IDEA HOW ONE GOES ABOUT GETTING A LAW DEGREE, MAN, I AM NOT AMERICAN AND I DID NOT GO TO UNIVERSITY. I AM BUT A HUMBLE TRASHCAN WHO LOVES BIBLICAL THEOLOGY AND SAME-SEX ROMANCE. If anything is too wildly inaccurate, please let me know, and, as ever, let me know if you spot something I should tag for that I've missed.

When he gets the rejection letter, he doesn't- he doesn't cry, exactly. No tears. He just sits on his bed and stares at it, chest heaving, eyes dry.

Columbia doesn't want him.

He's got other acceptances- Stanford, Chicago. They were supposed be safeties, not actual choices, though. He'd only applied to other colleges because his careers advisor told him to keep his options open, that only apping to schools in-state was risky, so he'd mailed off applications to a couple more schools, but he'd really been banking on Columbia, and now he can't go to law school.

It's not _fair_. It's not fair that Foggy's dad got sick. It's not fair that he promised his mom he'd stay in the city to go to school, and it's incredibly not fair he didn't get into Columbia. He friggin' killed that interview. He's going to be a lawyer. He deserves a good law school.

In the lounge room, he can hear his sisters laughing and talking over the noise of the TV. That dumb show they're obsessed with, with the two brothers who fight evil.

No, Foggy deserves Columbia. He worked his ass off for that 4.0 GPA, he made nice with all the right people for his letters of recommendation. There's no way in Hell he's giving it all up to be a butcher.

Foggy crumples the letter into a ball, tosses it across the room, and opens his laptop.

*

The internet has a ton to say about how this is done, a lot of it conflicting, but he thinks he has a solid idea of what he needs. It only takes a little shopping- even if he knew where to buy cat bones online, he'd have to use his mom's credit card, which, no- and a trip across the Hudson to get graveyard dirt, and before he has time to talk himself out of this stupid-ass idea, Friday night finds him standing around in Central Park at midnight, praying he doesn't get robbed or murdered before he has the chance to sell his soul.

He buries the box, patting the earth back down around it, keeping an eye out for murderers while he does so, and gets up, brushing dirt off his knees and groping in his hoodie pocket for his torch. Feeling like an idiot, he starts reading the ritual out of his notebook. He's most of the way through when he hears someone laughing.

"Really? Psalms?" A shadow moves under a tree, off to his left. "Who told you scripture was a good idea?"

Oh, great. Now he's got a crazy to deal with, on top of everything else. "I don't have any money, and I'm sort of in the middle of something, so-"

"Hey, you called me," says the voice. The shadow moves again, and a guy, a really hot guy about Foggy's age, steps into the light. "Usually people ask for favours before sending me away."

Foggy blinks, realising abruptly that his mouth is hanging open. "Uh," he says. "The internet said I had to do this for nine nights before you showed up."

"If you like." The guy smiles. If Foggy had doubted who- _what_ \- he was, he didn't now; that smile fits that face all wrong, and the way the light shines off his eyes is wrong. The guy- the demon, he's _summoned a demon_ \- moves towards him, moving like he's still figuring out how his body works, like he's trying it on in a dressing room. "I'm pretty busy, though, and Columbia won't wait forever."

"How did you- can you read minds?" Foggy takes an involuntary step backwards.

"Intentions," says the demon. "You want to go to law school, and you didn't get in." He frowns thoughtfully, head tilted, like he's listening to something. "Huh. That's interesting. You've been accepted to other schools, but- your dad? Cancer?"

"Bowel," says Foggy. "Caught it early, so the doctors think he'll recover, but Mom made me promise to stay in New York for college. I deserve Columbia, man. It's not too much to ask."

The demon smirks. "Nothing's too much to ask, depending on what you're offering," he says, voice low and seductive.

Naturally, the total babe Hell sent to deal with him is a flirt. "My eternal soul, right? You take souls?"

"Mm. Among other things." The demon takes Foggy's hand. Weird, but he just lets the demon turn his hand over, fingers feeling for the pulse in his wrist. His fingers are cold against the thin skin, and he frowns again. "But I can't take yours, I'm afraid."

"Why? Too soiled already?" Foggy jokes, nervously. The demon- the guy the demon is wearing, anyway, which is messed up- is handsome, like, model handsome, and he's standing very close.

"Quite the opposite," the demon says. "Your soul is too pure for me to take."

"Uh, not last I checked," says Foggy, with a disbelieving snort. He's having gay thoughts about a demonic entity, literally right this second. "I'm always sinning, man. Ask anyone. Sin, sin, sin, that's me."

Chuckling, the demon rubs his thumb over Foggy's wrist. It's very distracting. "The little commonplace sins leave a certain amount of... tarnish, let's say, but you're fundamentally good. Too good for Hell, even making a deal with something like me."

"So what can I trade?" Foggy wipes his free hand on his jeans. His palms are sweating. "I don't suppose you take Batman comics."

"Let's make it a game," the demon murmurs. "I'll do your favour for you, and if you can keep your soul pure for, say... ten years, you get to keep it."

"And if I can't?"

"Then you're mine," the demon says. He's even closer now, right up in Foggy's face, close enough for Foggy to see the traces of stubble on his jaw. "The day your soul is corrupted, I drag you down to Hell."

Foggy swallows. That is a lot to take in, really. Selling his soul for some hypothetical future date is one thing, but getting dragged out of the world, kicking and screaming, just like that? How would his family handle that? "What if I die before the ten years is up? Of, like, natural causes, or getting hit by a bus?"

"If your soul is still pure, you'll go to Heaven," the demon says. "Maybe you'll do a spell in Purgatory for an infernal compact, but that would be it. You can have it, Franklin. Law school, success, the future you've dreamed of, and your soul. You can have everything you want, if you let me help you."

That tone could be construed as reassuring, but it kind of isn't; too low, too sensual for comfort, and it's such a fucking obvious trap, Foggy really should know better. He shouldn't say yes. "Yes," he says, embarrassingly breathy. "Yes."

"Good," says the demon. This time, the smile sits more easily on his borrowed face, though the eyes still aren't right- he's looking through Foggy, not at him, blurry and unfocused. "You'll get to go to your dream college, be there to support your family, and all you have to do is keep your nose clean. That's fair, isn't it?"

"My dad," says Foggy quickly. Lustful gay thoughts, sure, but he's not one to miss cutting a deal. "Can you make him better?"

"I can help him recover," the demon says, shrugging. "Make sure it doesn't come back, but he'll always have been sick."

"That I can live with. Explaining miraculous healing to my parents would be tough."

"We have a deal, then," says the demon. "Columbia, your father's health. Sure you don't want anything else? Fame, fortune? Love?"

Oh, ha ha. "If I'm getting any of those, I'd rather have them for me, not because Satan made it happen," Foggy says.

"That's what I mean by pure. For your sake, I hope you stay that way." The demon lets go of his hand, trailing his fingers up Foggy's arm to his shoulder, thumb sliding under the collar of Foggy's t-shirt. It's shockingly intimate, and Foggy finds himself swaying closer.

"On Supernatural they seal pacts with a kiss," he says, unable to look away from the demon's lips. He's got a sweet, lush mouth, red and just a little wet. Their breath is practically mingling already.

The demon laughs again, low and warm. "This isn't Supernatural," he says, and he presses his thumb into the soft hollow under Foggy's collarbone, sending a spike of searing heat through his shoulder. Not in a sexy metaphorical sense- it _burns_ , like a branding iron on his flesh, the pain getting bigger and hotter every second. He tries to pull away, too surprised to scream, but the demon holds him tight, cradling Foggy's head against his neck, murmuring soothingly into his hair.

Foggy's not sure how long they stand there, but when he gets hold of himself, there's a wet patch on the demon's hoodie where he's been crying. He takes a deep, shuddering breath. "What was that?"

"Hellfire," says the demon softly. He brushes Foggy's hair out of his face, fingers gentle. "Our pact is sealed."

Hellfire. What Foggy has to look forward to, if he loses this bargain. The tiny patch of skin where the demon burned him throbs sharply. He's maybe going to puke. "And Columbia?"

"All yours," says the demon. He steps back, still smiling, though he looks a little sad, now. "Don't worry, Franklin. It's all going to be fine."

Foggy nods mutely. It's all going to be fine, huh. Very reassuring. He opens his mouth to say something, maybe make a smartass remark, but the demon turns away from him and melts into the shadows again, quiet footsteps fading into the background noise of the city.

*

He wakes up with a pounding headache, a nasty taste in his dry mouth, and his phone ringing. Eyes still closed, he flips it open. "Hello?"

"Good morning," a tinny female voice says. "Is this Franklin Nelson?"

"Speaking."

He lies in bed, phone held to his ear, as the voice on the phone introduces herself as Cathy from the Columbia admissions office, who is so sorry, Mr Nelson, about the mix up in their computer system. She explains that any rejection letter he may have received was misdirected, intended for another applicant entirely. She has a number of these calls to make today, but wanted to contact him early to confirm his scholarship details-

"Scholarship? I didn't- are you saying I got in, and I got a scholarship?" Foggy sits up abruptly, banging his head on the bookshelf over his bed.

"Why yes, Mr Nelson, of- oh, I'm sorry, this should have come through with your initial decision letter. You've been awarded full financial aid, so there are some follow-up forms to complete; you'll get those with your acceptance packet."

Foggy mm-hmms his way through the rest of the conversation, barely remembering to thank Cathy for the call, and drops his phone in the sheets, flopping back against the pillows. He scrubs his hands over his face. Moving his arm makes his burned shoulder sting, and it all comes back in a rush- where he was last night, why he's tired. What he did. Why Cathy from Admissions called him at ass o'clock on a Saturday. He runs his fingers over his collarbone gingerly, feeling out the raised lines of the mark the demon left on him; some kind of pattern, but it hurts too badly to be sure what.

Oh, well. He's awake now.

He picks out clothes (high necklines for the foreseeable future, thank goodness it's already getting cold) and shuffles to the bathroom to shower before anyone can spot the mark. Like hiding a hickey, except his sisters always clock those immediately. Once he's clean and dressed, he heads to the kitchen, and finds his mom making coffee.

"This is early for you," she says, eyeing him with affectionate suspicion. "Not that good a party after all?"

Right, party. Sam Callahan's party, where he definitely was last night, drinking illicit beers and cracking jokes with his friends. Not summoning beings from the infernal pit at all. "Nah, it was alright," he says, sitting down at the table.

"You feeling okay, honey?" His mom feels his forehead. Foggy probably is running hot, but he's still shower-damp, so maybe she won't notice.

"Fine, mom," he grumbles reflexively. "Just... tired."

"Hm, if you say so," she says. "Your dad's feeling better this morning, so I thought we might go out for breakfast, if you want to come."

"Yeah," he says. He scratches his neck, fingers brushing over the stinging edges of the mark. "Yeah, I'd like that. I can tell everyone my good news."

*


	2. Chapter 2

He's been in his new dorm for maybe half an hour- long enough to get his bed made, put up some posters, get the WiFi working- when there's a knock at the door. "It's open," he calls absently.

"I'm looking for 312," says a weirdly familiar voice, and then a weirdly familiar face comes through the door. The demon. It's the demon, in his _dorm room_.

"No, no no no," says Foggy. "No. The worst thing I did today was call my little sister a douchecanoe, and in my defense, she was being a douchecanoe, that does not qualify me for eternal damnation-"

"Am I in the wrong room?" The demon smiles politely, nose wrinkling under his sunglasses. "The signs aren't raised enough to feel the numbers, so I wasn't sure."

Oh, God, what if he's just some guy? What if the demon he called just climbed into the nearest jogger to talk to Foggy, and this guy has no idea what happened? Is he going to have to look at that face for the next three years, knowing what he did to get here? "Yeah, this is 312," he says, voice hoarse. "Sorry, you must be my roommate. I'm Foggy Nelson."

"Matt Murdock," says the demon, his roommate, whoever, holding out a hand to shake. He's got a red and white walking cane in his left hand. Blind, Foggy realises, and he knows that name.

"No shit, from Hell's Kitchen? You're the kid who saved that old dude! You're a hero!" He's babbling, ugh, but Matt just smiles at him, and he takes Matt's hand.

The mark on his chest flares with sensation, a sharp burst of heat, and Matt smirks. "Not the word I'd use."

"Oh, you fucker," says Foggy.

Demon Matt shuts the door.

"What are you doing here?" Foggy hisses, rubbing his shoulder. The burn was long healed, a neat design of raised swirls and bumps that hadn't so much as stung all summer, but he could feel it now, warm to the touch. "This wasn't part of the deal!"

"You were delightfully nonspecific about our deal, actually," says Demon Matt cheerfully, tossing his duffle bag onto the second bed. "The onus is on you to keep your soul clean, with no limitations on outside influence. Sloppy work, counsellor. Sure you want to be a lawyer, _Foggy_?"

"I'm sure you're an asshole," Foggy fires back. He sits on his bed, prodding his laptop- the class selection portal is a giant sack of crap, though that's now, apparently, not the worst part of his day. "And a denizen of Hell, which is beyond what I was expecting in terms of diversity, and a _body thief_ -"

"Hey, he wasn't using it," Demon Matt says, leaning his cane against the nightstand.

"Matt Murdock's dead?" Weirdly, that really bothers Foggy. The demon with a vested interest in corrupting his soul showing up again, that's cause for concern, obviously, but the thought of his childhood hero dying is a lot to take in.

Demon Matt tips a hand vaguely. "It's a little more complicated than 'dead', but practically speaking, yes. He was him, and now I'm him. Or he's me. However you want to parse that."

"Uh-huh," says Foggy faintly. He- he really has to finish enrolling in his classes, and he still hasn't picked a drawer for his underwear, and he's maybe talking to a haunted corpse. "Sounds like a wild time."

"You've no idea. I spent the summer in a _Catholic orphanage_. With _nuns_ ," Matt complains.

Foggy nods slowly, only remembering that Matt's blind when he doesn't respond. "I just nodded dubiously," he says. "An orphanage?"

"Matt lived in one," Matt says. "Hardly a spa retreat, but if I leave this form, it'll die, and I'll have to get a new one. Plus, this body already had an offer from Columbia. Too convenient to ignore."

"Matt Murdock- the real one, who's handwavey dead- was coming here. And you killed him, so you could be my roommate." Foggy's not going to puke. He just got assigned this room, he doesn't even own a mop yet-

"Whoa, no," says Matt. "I just found him. He got stabbed, right here." He lifts his shirt to show the scar, a long, jagged line under his ribs. He's really buff for a dead guy. Possibly Foggy's freaking out, if he's noticing a demon's abs. "He was about to die, you were calling me, and I figured waste not, want not. The roommate thing, though," he says, smirking again, "that was all me."

Foggy takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. He does that a few more times until he's sure he's not going to be sick, pushing the heels of his hands into his eyes. His laptop pings. Oh, good. He got the last spot in Punjabi. When he looks up again, Matt's unzipped his duffle, and is methodically folding his clothes into the dresser on his side of the room. "So you're just going to follow me around until my soul shrivels from the horrors of campus life, huh," he says.

Matt turns to him, grinning that off-kilter grin. "Unless you prefer the hands-on approach," he says, waggling his eyebrows.

Foggy flops back on the bed, groaning. Jesus help him, his demon is a dork.

*

The first few weeks are the worst. Trying to find everything on campus, finding cheap textbooks, all of that, but adjusting to sharing a living space is weird, too- he's the only boy, so he's never had to share before, and now he shares with a literally evil and obnoxiously pretty weirdo. Matt does innocuously bizarre stuff, like organising his books in alphabetical order, rather than by which class they're for. One afternoon, he comes back to the room to find his blind roommate doing tumble-turns across the room.

"This body," says Matt, rolling his shoulders, cracking his neck, "is _so interesting_."

"Well, it's blind," says Foggy. "That's novel."

"If you're used to eyes, I guess. But it knows all kinds of wild tricks." He leaps, effortless, from the floor to Foggy's bed, and *backflips off it*, landing neatly on his feet.

"That's... huh. That a demon thing? Infernal gymnastics?" Foggy sits on his bed, carefully not ogling the muscles in Matt's arms.

"Muscle memory," Matt says. He does a handstand. "Neat, right?"

"How did a blind kid learn- wait, sorry, that's ableist," Foggy says, and now it's the pale skin of Matt's stomach he's not staring at. That's gravity, Nelson, not a come-on. "Is it like the enhanced sensory stuff you were telling me about, where you can hear blood and smell feelings?"

"You're a laugh riot," says Matt, whose face is starting to turn red. "But yeah, the senses and the muscles all got trained at once."

"Trained." Matt was blinded at nine, and he's been in an orphanage for most of the time since; whatever weirdness the demon's picking out of his memory happened to an underage kid, and that's... a worrying thought. "Trained by whom?"

Matt's feet hit the floor, and he folds back into a crouch, smooth and easy. "Concern for others is a virtue, Foggy," he says earnestly. "Don't get into good habits."

Most of the time it's easy to forget what Matt is. He's got Matt's memories, he's signed up to the classes Matt wanted, and he still has to eat and sleep and stuff, so he's just- Foggy's roomie, who happens to be a minion of Satan. And, sure, he does spend time trying to turn Foggy to evil- dragging him to frat parties, trying to coax him into corporate law electives, getting him laid. God Almighty does Foggy get laid. He wasn't a virgin in high school, but this is next level. Matt is the consummate wingman, and college students are way more into the Foggy Nelson experience than he'd expected. Still, getting awesomely laid on the regular (not that he doesn't have bad runs, but everyone has bad runs) apparently doesn't qualify him for damnation, not even when he does it with dudes.

"Maybe standards have changed Upstairs," Matt says contemplatively one morning, when Foggy shuffles in from spending the night in Darren Winkler's room. "Back in the day, lustful thoughts were enough."

Foggy stretches, wincing- you _can_ fit two people in a dorm single, but it's not great for the spine- and shrugs. "Never seen you stop at thinking about it."

Matt smiles. His actual smile is kind of goofy, when he's not doing Seduction Of The Innocent face. It's inappropriately cute. "My role in the universe is to sow discord and punish the unrighteous."

"Banging hotties isn't discord," Foggy argues. "Though you do tend to love 'em and leave 'em. Maybe that's what makes it sinful." Foggy, unlike Matt, only hooks up with people he actually likes, and buys them pancakes afterwards. Or receives pancakes, he's not picky. "Speaking of, Darren's on some kind of juice cleanse, so I haven't eaten yet. Breakfast?"

"Food really does taste better stolen," Matt muses, levering himself off the bed.

"Me offering you breakfast does not count as theft, and we're not dining and dashing again," says Foggy, handing Matt his cane. "It looks suspicious when the blind guy does it."

"You always go back and pay anyway." Matt wrinkles his nose distastefully. "Entirely ruining the whole exercise."

Foggy rolls his eyes, mostly for his own benefit. Matt, or the demon currently known as Matt, at least, hadn't been on the mortal plane for longer than fifteen minutes at a time for an unspecified but very long while- possibly centuries- and his ideas as to what sort of sins qualified one for damnation were, it seemed, outdated. Father Lantom, his parents' priest, had also been spectacularly unhelpful with Foggy's fumbling questions about mortal sin, so Foggy's resolved to stop worrying about it, and go back to worrying about how badly school is kicking his ass.

And Matt really is a pretty good roommate, aside from half-assedly trying to corrupt him. He's tidy, he's considerate about noise, he studies as hard as Foggy does, if not harder. "This is clearly going to be a long game," Matt says, when Foggy asks why he bothers. "I can't turn your soul to darkness if I get kicked out of college."

(Foggy does not point out how weak that sounds. If Matt drops out, he might get a crappy roomie who's noisy, or homophobic, or leaves socks everywhere or something.)

They study, and they party, and they walk to classes together, and it- works. It works, somehow. Foggy got his dream college, and every weekend he goes to visit his family, and his Dad looks better and eats better, and it works.

(The whole Elektra thing, Foggy has no explanation for. It lasts longer than Matt's other dalliances, and when it goes bad, it goes really spectacularly bad, but Matt's unusually silent on the topic, and Foggy doesn't like to push.)

Despite Matt's efforts, Foggy doesn't succumb to moral turpitude in college, and graduates cum laude with his soul functionally intact. He doesn't hold Matt's summa cum laude against him- being technically older than the human concept of law has to have some perks, right- and he happily accepts his help with cover letters for internships, which definitely pays off. "Paid internships! In this age of capitalist exploitation, you and I, my friend, will be actually getting reimbursed for our labour," Foggy crows, tugging at Matt's elbow.

"Can't you at least focus on the temptations of avarice?" Matt grumbles.

"Oh, trust me, I'm very focused on the money. We're gonna be rich, buddy! I'm gonna buy my Mom enough cured meats to make up for my becoming a lawyer." Foggy guides him through the glass revolving doors into the huge, gleaming lobby of Landman and Zack. "Might buy you a smile or two with the change. Come on, man, we did it. Prestigious law firm! Cushy internships! A horrifying vortex of corporate evil, stripping away what joy remains in my soul! The dream!"

Matt purses his lips, caught between a frown and a smile, and lets Foggy lead him to the elevators.

*


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this puppy before s2 came out; I'm going to finish it while watching s2, but it will have nothing to do with s2 canon, unless I have an opportunity for painful foreshadowing, because I am The Worst™.

Landman and Zack is not a dream. It's _the_ dream, technically, all glass and chrome and intimidating senior lawyers in intimidating suits, but it's also long, boring hours, taking notes in meetings, incredibly dry paperwork, lots of running around. Foggy had expected interning to be bullshit, but this is really intensely bullshit, up to and including the clientele. Not that interns get to work with clients, but it seems like everyone L &Z represents is hugely rich, and got that way by being deeply slimy.

But this is what he signed up for, so Foggy cuts his hair (shorter, not short, he's got his pride) and buys more suits and ties, and he goes to the shitty terrible "networking" mixers Human Resources runs. He does the thing.

Matt's even worse than usual, too. He's serious and hardworking in meetings, but in their literal closet of a shared office he bounces between goofy and morose, coaxing Foggy out drinking by night and reading Thurgood Marshall at his desk by day.

"It's just a Matt thing," he says defensively when Foggy asks. "I'm- he's- Matt liked Marshall, and the patterns are relaxing."

"You find Thurgood Marshall relaxing," says Foggy. "I'm rolling my eyes at you, Murdock."

"Matt finds the patterns soothing," Matt says. Foggy rolls his eyes again. Matt's tried to explain the practicalities of living in the body of somebody not-quite-dead, but Foggy doesn't truly understand how it works.

("Imagine a house," he'd said over the table at Josie's, several drinks worse for wear. "And the owner of the house has to leave, but they can only pack one bag. For reasons. They pack their most treasured pos- possess- _things_ , their photo albums and heirlooms and pets, and they leave, but all their other stuff is still in the house, yeah?"

"Yeah," says Foggy. "Stuff. Kitchenware, and, and linen. Coathangers."

"Coathangers! Yes. Except Matt Murdock is the house."

"You're a house?"

"Matt's a house. I live in it, in Matt, and his stuff is all still here, but Matt isn't here." Matt's brow had furrowed, and he'd waved a hand, nearly spilling his drink. "Mostly he's not here."

"Okay, you're a house," Foggy had said, tipsy and agreeable. "Are drinks on the house?"

Matt had laughed, then, and let the metaphor drop.)

" _You_ like Thurgood Marshall," says Foggy. "Don't pout. 'Do what you want and let the law catch up' pretty accurately sums up your life."

"It's 'do what you think is right'," says Matt quietly. "There's a difference."

So Foggy's known for a while that something was up, if not exactly what, and he's used to his gorgeous asshole BFF keeping shit to himself. And it's not the first time Matt's turned up in the middle of the night, questionably dressed. It's not even the first time Matt's come in via the window. First time it's happened since college, though, since they got separate apartments. (Foggy had assumed they were going to move in together again, but Matt had insisted. "Two men living together isn't a sin," he'd said, light but firm. "How are you supposed to succumb to wickedness with me cluttering up the place? You hate an audience.")

Foggy's a heavy sleeper, but he's made an attempt at decorating his new shoebox of an apartment, and there's actually stuff under his window to knock over. He spends a minute lying in bed, panicking about being murdered, so when he comes out of his room, baseball bat in hand, finding Matt hunched over on his couch is honestly a relief.

"Buddy," he says. "You scared me, man. I gave you a key."

"Couldn't let your neighbours see me," says Matt, and when he looks up, Foggy sees the blood on him. Jesus, it's everywhere, drying on his cheeks and in his hair, splattered up and down his hand wraps.

"Jesus," he says, ignoring Matt's wince, because _Jesus_. "How much of this is yours?"

"Not much," says Matt. "Just a few scrapes. I'll be fine." He will be fine. Foggy knows that. Part of the demon-inhabiting-a-human-vessel thing is crazily accelerated healing- Foggy's seen it in action, even, when Matt's cut himself shaving, or that one time he dropped a glass in their room. It's like watching a time-lapse video. Cool, and definitely weird, but it's never seemed important before.

Foggy sits down, feeling sick. "Matt, what did you do?"

Matt coughs, curls his knees up to his chest, and explains.

Foggy puts his head in his hands when he's done. Christ Almighty, a little kid. A kid caught up in _that_ , a bad man deliberately doing evil, and his infernal best friend listening through the walls.

"I'm not angry with you," he says, very carefully, and it's true. It's not Matt he's angry with. "And I believe you about Social Services, much though I wish that was bullshit, I just don't- Matt, why? Why get involved?" He lets out a helpless little laugh. "Isn't Hell supposed to be pro-evil?"

"You don't understand," Matt snarls. "You don't understand Hell at all. None of you do. Hell is for _unrepentant sinners_ , Foggy. The irredeemably wicked, who turn away from grace. It's not a joke. It's not a slap on the wrist. It's suffering, true suffering, and it's always earned."

"Punishing the unrighteous," Foggy says, faintly.

"Yes," Matt says, baring his teeth. It's nowhere near a smile. "That little girl is _innocent_. There are no innocent souls in Hell. I've never, not in a thousand years- I've never heard anything like that. A sin that cries to Heaven." He looks down at his bloodied hands. They're nearly healed already, fine pink lines of new skin where his knuckles had split open. "I understand that, now."

"Is this going to get you in trouble?" Foggy says, and he risks touching his fingers to Matt's clenched fists. Matt takes his hand, gripping a little too tightly. Dried blood flakes off onto the couch.

"I didn't kill him," Matt says. Foggy's stomach lurches. He hadn't thought- that had genuinely not been something he'd considered, that Matt might have taken a human life. But he hasn't. That's important. "He won't enjoy it, but he'll live. Not their problem."

"That's... good, but I actually meant human you. Human trouble. You can't do this again," Foggy says. "There are laws for this stuff. Police officers. If you get caught doing this shit, you'll end up in jail, and I cannot face L&Z by myself, man. The other interns will eat me alive."

A noise vaguely approximating a laugh bubbles out of Matt. "Well. Can't leave you to the sharks, I guess."

"Go shower," Foggy says, squeezing Matt's fingers. His chest throbs. "You look like something out of Watchmen."

"I don't know what that is," Matt says. He unfolds himself from the couch and stands, steady on his feet.

"Graphic novel. Lots of blood," Foggy says absently. "You remember what blood looks like, right?"

"Mmhmm," Matt murmurs. "I remember blood just fine."

*

 

They make it another three weeks after that, Matt brooding and Foggy forcing himself to act like everything's fine, before they're offered permanent positions. Matt, of course, wants to turn them down. And it's not that Foggy hasn't been freaking out over the incident; not like he doesn't have nightmares about Matt coming to him covered in blood, and likely will for the rest of his goddamn life. It's not even that he likes Landman and Zack, because he very much doesn't. They're assholes. "Which we knew going in," he says. "And which I thought was your entire plan- lure me into the nest of vipers and have them inject me with their sin-venom, while also looking great on a resume."

"I thought they were sharks," says Matt. He's really the worst at deflecting.

"Vipersharks. Rare and dangerous crossbreed. You suck at changing the subject."

"Do you think what happened in that room was right?" Matt's jaw is set, defiant. "I don't. Protecting corporations from people with cancer? It's wrong. That man is dying, painfully, and he did nothing to deserve what they're putting him through."

"I don't disagree with you," says Foggy. He nods slowly. "I am nodding right now. I'm just not sure when you started quoting my conscience."

Matt's still- not looking at him, obviously, but his head's turned in Foggy's direction, listening closely. "The air in this building," he says, carefully. "It tastes like sin, Foggy. The moral apathy on the breath of the senior partners, the casual disregard for human life- treating people like balances in a ledger- and I worry. About you." He says it like a secret, like something he's ashamed of. "You can't end up like that."

Foggy looks at him for a long, long moment. Then he sighs, and pulls an empty file box off the shelf.

"What are you doing?" Matt asks.

"I'm going to steal as many bagels as I can fit into this box," he says. Matt tilts his head. "You forget to feed your flesh vessel enough when we're getting paid. With you as my partner, there's no telling when I'll be able to afford a real meal again."

Quitting sucks. So much. Their supervisors are brutal about it, driving home all the stuff Foggy's been saying about the opportunity they're throwing away; the other interns are beyond douchebags, which is rich, since they'd mostly been dicks to Foggy and patronising dicks to Matt, so it's not like they'll be missed. His mom, his _mom_ , sends him passive-aggressive texts about considering his future. Generalised nightmare, but it comes along with finding office space, with ordering obnoxious business cards- with Braille, and embossed, so Matt can feel the lettering- and it comes with Karen. Karen, who turns out to be actually innocent, if just as broke as Matt and Foggy, and who knows how to do the office stuff neither of them know how to do.

Plus, they totally get to do some lawyering. Lawyering at _cops_. That's awesome.

Karen's awesome, but Matt doesn't trust her. He's not a dick about it, Foggy knows what that looks like, but he's... chilly. "You wanna let me in on your thought processes there, pal?" Foggy asks him one night, after Karen's gone home. "Normally you and beautiful women get along just fine."

"I didn't know she was beautiful," says Matt. "I'd guessed, from context clues. I like Karen a lot. She's just... she's seen some darkness in her life, and I don't want- I worry enough about you, you know?"

"You think she's going to make me evil?" Foggy raises his eyebrows incredulously. "I'm raising my eyebrows at you."

"No, I mean I worry enough about you without having to worry about Karen, as well." Matt scrubs a hand over his face. "You signed up for this. Literally. She's a regular human being, and being around us- around me- is risky."

"Pish tosh," says Foggy. "You talk a good game, Murdock, but I know you're secretly a big softie. Metaphorically, obviously, because those abs are insane. You're a musclebound teddy bear. When's the last time you even tried to lure me down the path of sin?"

"This whole practice is a clever ruse to lead you into penury, then into crime and depravity to support yourself," Matt says, the barest hint of a smile playing around his mouth. "I'm engineering your ruin as we speak."

"Sure you are, buddy." Foggy slaps him on the shoulder companionably. "You want to get dinner? We can start my slide into poverty with egg rolls."

"Yeah, let me just finish up here," Matt says, closing his laptop. He dawdles, shuffling papers, while Foggy goes and packs up his own things, and follows him out into the hallway.

"Seriously," Foggy says, shutting the door behind them. "Karen's not going to get sucked into the underworld just because you're nice to her occasionally. You're allowed to have friends."

"Not really," says Matt. He smiles his Sad Orphan smile, which is worse than him not smiling at all, but does at least mean he's making an effort. "But I'll try."

"See? Easy." Foggy nudges Matt's elbow to guide him down the stairs. "Now come on. I can't bankrupt myself on Chinese food alone."

Matt, in a surprise move, actually does listen to Foggy; he opens up a little with Karen, lets himself laugh a little more. It's nice. It's also... less than nice, because Karen seems to take Matt defrosting as her cue to start flirting with him, albeit in ways Matt can't really appreciate, flicking her hair and sending him little looks. And, okay, if you've got your pick of Nelson & Murdock, Foggy's clearly the second choice. Third, now there's a second ultra-hottie in the office, and the hotties are flirting with each other, not him. He can't blame either of them, but it stings, just a little.

It's not like Foggy hasn't known, for a while, that he's, you know, sort of in love with Matt. He's stopped making excuses to himself. Matt Murdock is stupidly pretty, and whoever- or whatever- is driving him might be, technically, evil, but he's kind, and funny. This combination of body and personality has been Foggy's best friend and constant companion since his first day of college. He loves him.

The awkwardness of Matt flirting with gorgeous women- awkwardness, agony, whatever- he's used to it, mostly. Matt uses his looks as a tool all the time, and Foggy's used to that; he knows it doesn't really mean anything when Matt flashes his dimples at courthouse clerks and baristas, but watching him smile and laugh with an actual romantic prospect still makes Foggy's chest go tight.

It's all beside the point, because they have a business to run, clients with cases to manage, busted-ass Wi-Fi. Then they take Elena Cardenas's case, and everything promptly gets wildly out of hand. Every path they go down leads back to Fisk, or to the asshole in the black pyjamas running around beating people up- it feels too big to fathom, too much. He has _shrapnel scars_ now, which is, frankly, beyond the level of excitement he wants in his life. Foggy can't keep up with all of his own life drama, much less Matt’s. Even Matt can't keep up with Matt's drama- he keeps coming into the office bruised and exhausted, offering increasingly weak excuses for where he's been and what he's been doing.

In retrospect, Foggy feels really dumb for not working it out sooner.

*


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHEN WILL THESE ASSHOLES STOP TALKING? NEVER. (sidebar: I threw together [a playlist of the stuff I'm listening to while I write this](https://play.spotify.com/user/jk_rockin/playlist/4ww5W0Lw1dA7ro589WAzwJ?play=true&utm_source=open.spotify.com&utm_medium=open), if you're interested in that.)

To be fair, Foggy thinks, pressing a towel to Matt's bleeding stomach, Matt plays the Regular Blind Guy role to the hilt. The cane, the glasses. Letting Foggy guide him and narrate for him. It's a carefully honed disguise, designed to make it easy to forget what he is underneath. It still shouldn't have worked on Foggy. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen, for fuck's sake.

Except, right now, the devil in him doesn't seem to be doing him much good. He's bleeding, a lot, from what seems like a very big, very nasty gash in his side, and he's not healing up. Foggy has seen Matt nearly lop a finger off chopping vegetables- Matt's early attempts at learning to cook were not the most elegant affairs, he's surprisingly unwieldy with knives- and seen the cut seal itself within a minute. Bruises melt off him. He'd thought Matt was practically indestructible, but here he is, frantically trying to remember his freshman First Aid classes, applying pressure to the wound with one hand, and operating Matt's shitty plastic burner phone with the other.

When Claire arrives, Foggy's mostly calm, and too busy being grateful she came to think too much about Matt's ridiculous ability to collect gorgeous people. "Do you know what happened to him?" she asks, in that gentle voice nurses use to talk to people in shock. Is he in shock? He doesn't think he's in shock.

"No," he says. "I just found him like this, with the phone in his hand, and I called you."

"You did the right thing," Claire says. "Well, no, you should probably have called 911, but I'm the next best thing. Help me lift him."

Foggy takes his arms, Claire his legs, and they hoist Matt onto the couch. He's heavy, a slack weight in their arms, and he barely makes a sound. Claire tucks the blood-soaked towel along Matt's side, opens her bag, and starts cutting away the ragged mess of Matt's shirt with surgical scissors, revealing an equally ragged mess of flesh beneath it.

"This would be a bad time for be to be squeamish about blood, wouldn't it," Foggy says faintly.

"A really bad time," Claire says. "Go get me some more towels, and some water. See if there's any left in the kettle."

Foggy goes, and comes back with an armful of Matt's outrageously expensive towels, a bucket, and the kettle from the kitchen, which is, thankfully, still half-full of water. Claire has Matt's shirt open; even to Foggy's untrained eye, it looks bad. The bleeding hasn't stopped, and Matt's wet, shallow breathing is the worst sound he's ever heard. "Is he going to be alright?" he asks.

"You tell me," she says. “You're the one who summoned this asshole from Hell."

Foggy sits down in an armchair. He swallows roughly. "He told you."

"Parts of it," says Claire. She gives him a long, searching look, then turns her attention back to Matt's wounds. "I wasn't sure how much of it was true."

"Probably most of it. He doesn't tend to lie," Foggy says, and promptly feels nauseous all over again. An hour ago, he'd have sworn on it. Now, looking down at Matt's battered face, he's not even sure who he's looking at. "He's just a guy, most of the time, you know? Or I thought he was." He rubs his eyes with the cleanest of his knuckles. "Should he still be bleeding? He heals crazy fast. It's an infernal thing."

"The healing isn't automatic," she says, mopping a truly frightening amount of blood from Matt's stomach. "He has to concentrate to do it, apparently. It stops when he passes out."

"Uh-huh," Foggy says. He is not going to pass out. "He never told me that. I thought it just happened."

"You know what he is, though," Claire says mildly. "And you knew he could die, if you didn't get him help."

He hadn't known. Matt can die. _Matt_ can _die_ , and he's been going out to fight crime, alone, in a sweatshirt and jeans. "I didn't think. I just did it."

"You've got good instincts, then. He's a good man, especially considering... y'know." She shrugs, fingers moving carefully but swiftly over Matt's skin.

"You are the most relaxed person I've ever met in my life," says Foggy. "If you don't mind my asking, how did you find out? Did he tell you, or are you- you're not one too, are you?"

"Me? I'm just a person, same as you, but you see shit on an ER ward you would not believe," Claire says. "And on my couch, since I dug this asshole out of a dumpster. Some of it I worked out myself, some of it he told me. Mostly so I didn't scream and call an exorcist when his skin started knitting itself back together under my hands, I think."

"He never told me about the healing thing. How it worked, I mean." Foggy scrubs his hands over his face, not even worrying about the blood this time. "I didn't even ask."

"You know he doesn't need to keep the scars?" Claire smoothes micropore tape down over the edges of a cut, quick and efficient. "He could heal them, but I think he wants them. Some messed up self-flagellating shit."

"Matt grew up Catholic," Foggy says.

"Not everybody who grows up Catholic ends up as weird as Matt," says Claire. "But I take your point."

She works quietly, stitching and taping Matt back together. When she's done, he's still unconscious, but he's breathing steadily, and he doesn't resist when Foggy helps Claire peel off the rest of his ruined clothes. They leave him on the couch- there's no way to get him to the bed without risking the fresh stitches- and Claire is kind enough to not laugh at Foggy for insisting on finding Matt the softest blanket in the apartment. She does give him a look, still. "He gets cold easily," Foggy says defensively, draping the blanket over Matt's chest.

Claire shakes her head, and zips her bag. "When Matt told me his partner called him out of Hell, you are not what I imagined," she says. "I can't exactly picture you chanting and drawing on the floor with chicken blood."

"I'm related to, like, half a dozen butchers," says Foggy. "Chicken blood is not hard to come by."

"Learn to take a compliment, jackass," she says, rolling her eyes. "He'll probably come out of it in a couple of hours. Text me when he wakes up, and check in with me tomorrow. You should get some sleep."

"You too," says Foggy, knowing full well that he won't. "Thank you, Claire. Also, sorry, I guess."

"It's not your mess to apologise for," says Claire. "But thanks."

*

The sun is well up by the time Matt wakes up. Foggy hasn't slept. He's dozed, cried a little, paced the length of Matt's apartment countless times, drunk too many cups of Matt's pretentious organic coffee. Mostly, he's watched Matt sleep. The injuries make him hard to look at, the sutures stark against his skin, bruises lurid on his face, but he still looks like the Matt that Foggy knows. Knew. He's not sure, now.

Matt's whole body winces as he shifts awake. His eyes open; his breath catches, as though taken by surprise, and he turns his head towards the chair where Foggy's sitting. "Foggy?" he croaks, trying to sit up.

"I wouldn't move too much, if I were you," says Foggy. "Then again, maybe I'm out of the loop about that, too."

"How did I- oh," Matt says, gingerly touching the edges of his patched-together stomach. "Who stitched me up?"

"Claire. Your hot nurse friend. She seems nice." Foggy rubs his palms over his knees, trying to keep his hands steady. "Very well-informed."

Matt sighs, a soft, wounded sound. "It's not the first time she's found me bleeding. I had to tell her something," he says.

"See, you say shit like that, like you think it's helping," says Foggy. "I cannot accurately capture in words how much it does not help. What the _fuck_ , Matt?"

"Okay, you're upset. That's fair," Matt says.

A noise comes out if Foggy's throat which might, maybe, pass for a laugh. "Upset," he says. "Sure. We'll go with that."

"Foggy, please," Matt says, looking stricken.

"Please what? Please stop asking how you got stabbed?" snaps Foggy. "How did that come about, exactly? Fall down another manhole?"

"Went after Fisk. He got away," says Matt, pulling himself up to sit with a pained groan. It would be more affecting if Foggy couldn't see the wounds on Matt's torso healing over as he speaks. "There might have been a ninja."

"A ninja," Foggy says flatly. "Jesus. You know was the worst part of this bullshit is, Murdock? The worst part- well, actually, finding you in a pool of blood was the worst part. The worst part, other than the literally mortal danger? You told me. I knew about your enhanced senses. I knew about the boxing, and your weird blind guy parkour. I knew you'd done it before, when that little girl was in danger. I knew, I knew all that, and I still didn't figure out that my friendly neighbourhood vigilante was my best friend."

"I'm sorry," says Matt. He sounds it, which is terrible. "You've seen what's happening out there. Somebody had to do something."

"And that somebody couldn't, I don't know, use the legal system? The police?" Foggy's not sure when he stood up, but he's pacing again now, too jittery to keep still. "You can hear heartbeats, and smell intentions with your crazy demon powers. You're telling me you can't find one clean cop in the entire district?"

"It's not a matter of one clean cop," Matt says. "It's clean officers in the evidence room, clean A.D.A.s, clean judges. Fisk owns half the city, Foggy. He's evil. Too big to go down clean. Somebody has to get their hands dirty to stop him."

"That is a shitty-ass metaphor," says Foggy. "If you didn't look like you lost a fight with a meat tenderising mallet, I would sock you in the jaw."

"I can heal up, if punching me would help," says Matt.

"No, thank you. Don't let me interrupt your masochistic wallowing," Foggy says, and stops in his tracks. "Wait. Hold the phone. You're a demon."

"Yes?" Matt blinks at him Is this news?"

"You're a _demon_ ," says Foggy. "You're, like, a bag of evil intentions in a person suit. Fisk is evil. Why are you fighting him?"

For once, Matt has the good grace to look shifty. "So you think I should just let him destroy the lives of thousands of people, is that it?"

"No, Matt, of course I don't, but I, last I heard, am a human who is not evil. You're literally a minion of Satan," Foggy says. "Do not fuck me around. What are you _doing_?"

Matt takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. "You know what I did when I first manifested in this body? After I left you, I just... walked. I walked around the park, and out onto the streets, and I just wandered until sunrise, listening to the night sounds. Matt Murdock really loves this city. The noise, and the smell, and the crush of people. He loves being a part of it. He loves being alive, even when he wants to crawl into bed and never come out again. He loves-" He pauses, swallowing roughly. "He loves people. He wants to keep them safe. It's very... distracting."

"Distracting," says Foggy. "So you just, what, accidentally wandered into a Dread Pirate Roberts costume? Slipped and fell onto some criminals?"

"Foggy, you don't understand-"

"Yeah, I never do, do I? And you always manage to get out of explaining. Guess it's more convenient for you if I'm just your dumb human patsy," Foggy says, voice breaking. "You know what? I can't be here right now." He rubs his hot, stinging eyes, and grabs his jacket off the back of the armchair.

"Please don't," says Matt, on the edge of desperate. "You're not dumb, Fog, you're my- you're _Matt's_ best friend, and he- I, I just want to protect people. To protect you."

"I never asked you to," Foggy snaps. "I never would. I don't need a vigilante bodyguard, Matt."

"This city needs me," Matt says. He sounds so tired. All his wounds have closed over, now, but he's left the scars, red and livid on his chest, and the bruises on his face, which still look fresh and painful.

"Yeah? I need my best friend," says Foggy, and he doesn't look behind him as he walks out.

*


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the past month I have helped move a business out of a warehouse, worked twenty hours of overtime on top of my regular hours at my full-time job and two interstate conventions at my sometimes job, and somehow scraped this chapter together. Please be gentle with me. I promise I'm going somewhere with this.

Foggy hasn't had all that many bad breakups. He and Marci had a few off-again periods in college preceded by screaming matches, but that's pretty much it; he has no experience to compare it to, but the terrible dance he and Matt are doing around one another kind of feels like he imagines acrimonious divorce proceedings feel.

They avoid each other in the office, and that's fine. They don't have any cases anyway. No cases also means nothing to distract Foggy from his thoughts, or, worse, his feelings. He can't talk to Karen, because she doesn't know about Matt. She doesn't know anything about Matt, really. He can't imagine trying to explain the demon meatpuppet thing going anywhere but the psych ward at Bellevue, and the Devil of Hell's Kitchen thing? Foggy's having a hard time getting his head around that one himself.

Logically, it's right there. Matt has wacky gymnastic skills. He keeps in shape by punching stuff. He keeps weird hours, always has. Foggy has seen him splattered with someone else's blood. All the signs were in front of him all this time, but even now, knowing it's true, it's hard to believe. Hard to reconcile his earnest best friend with a shadowy figure backflipping off rooftops.

So instead of thinking about it, he drinks. He maybe drinks a little more than he should. Josie has a keen eye for existential despair, and she's generous when she pours. It should bother him more to be one of Josie's lost souls, but he's sad, and he's broke. He'll take it.

He gets so far down his own sadness spiral he actually calls Marci. As booty calls go, it's not that bad a life choice; despite her acerbic personality, he does actually like her, so it doesn't violate his only-people-I-actually-like hookup policy. They have fun. Marci's shameless in bed, which Foggy both really likes and strives to emulate, and she's straightforward, which he appreciates.

(Matt's never been straightforward. Clearly Foggy isn't all that straightforward either, if he's thinking about his best friend- ex best friend? Is that what they are, now?- while he's in bed with a beautiful woman.)

Of course, in Marci's case, straightforward means she doesn't try to be gentle with him, which is kind of why he called her. "You're going to call him eventually," she says, buckling on her wristwatch. "Might as well get it over with. Not that I mind the opportunity for rebound sex-"

"You do know he and I never actually dated, right?" Foggy says, and wants to smack himself for the twinge in his chest when he says it. "It's not rebound sex if it wasn't a breakup."

"I know breakups, Foggybear. You and I clocked up a few between us," says Marci. She leans over him, and runs her fingers through his hair. "It was when I got tired of competing with Murdock for your attention that I gave it up as a waste of my extremely valuable time. I'd take it personally, but it's not me, is it?"

Foggy swallows around the lump in his throat. "No," he says hoarsely. "No, it's not you."

"I know. I'm fabulous." She kisses him on the mouth, sweet and soft. It's a very nice kiss; she smells like expensive perfume, rich and fruity, and her long nails scratch at his scalp, and he's still, still, thinking about Matt. There's the whole problem, right there. "You really know how to pick 'em," she says.

"Picked you, didn't I?" Foggy says, swatting Marci's ass as she climbs off the bed.

"Oh, please," she scoffs, patting her hair back into place. "I picked you, and we both know it."

He knows how he feels about Matt. He's made his peace with it, but someone else being aware of how he feels without him having said anything stings, even if it is Marci. Actually, especially because it's Marci, who he's barely spoken to since _law school_ , and who talked about it like she knew before he did. If she can see it, how obvious must it be?

He goes home to his shoebox apartment, but moping on the couch feels too pathetic, even for him, so he goes to the office. It's cold and smells like dust, but Matt won't be there. Karen is, and they, too, move awkwardly around one another, a pale imitation of the distance he feels from Matt; it lasts all of an hour of him sitting at his desk, shuffling papers around like he's doing something, before the mournful glances Karen keeps giving him through his window get too much to stand. "You know I'm the sighted partner in this office, right? I can tell when you're doing that," he says, and immediately feels bad about it.

"I'm sorry, I just. It was going so well," Karen says, setting aside the file she's been toying with and coming over to his door. "Not the creepy staring. I thought Nelson and Murdock was going well, but then you two... whatever happened between you two happened, and now you're both so unhappy, and we have no cases, and it sucks."

Foggy sighs. "It sucks beyond the telling of it," he says.

"You could call him," says Karen, casually. Well, sort of. Like someone doing a bad impression of how someone being casual might sound. "Let bygones be bygones. Be the bigger person!"

"Please think before you say things out loud," Foggy says, looking pointedly down at the swell of his belly.

"Oh, I didn't- sorry, that was rude," she says. "I meant, you know, take the moral high road, or whatever. See if you can't talk it out."

"Of course, _I_ have to call _him_. Being the moral compass of this organisation, that's my job," he says,

"Foggy," she says. "He's really sad."

"Oh, is he. He's sad. What am I meant to do with that," he asks, throwing his hands up. "I know he's sad. I'm sad too. It doesn't actually _fix_ anything."

"If I knew what had happened, I might be able to give you better advice?" Karen aims a smile at him, a little wobbly one that keeps slipping. She's trying on the winsome innocent look again; it is indeed very winsome, but he can't tell her. He wants to, but he can't.

"Not my beans to spill," says Foggy. "It's personal. I'm sorry, Karen. This whole thing." He waves a hand, encompassing the office, and the space between his desk and Matt's empty office, and sighs, suddenly very tired. "It really does suck, doesn't it."

"It doesn't have to," says Karen. "It could be better."

Foggy shakes his head. "That isn't my call either," he says, sighing.

It's very possible that Foggy would have caved, eventually, and called Matt. Or maybe Matt would have called him. They've never really fought- little squabbles over this class project or that pile of unwashed dishes, but nothing like this; he doesn't know exactly how long it would have taken one of them to give in, but as it is, Hell's Kitchen doesn't give them the time to find out. More and more terrible things happen every day; he feels alone like he never has before, with Karen always off with Ben Urich doing whatever she thinks she's doing, and Matt a dark blur on the periphery of his life. It's too much, and whenever shit is just too much, Foggy does the same thing. He buckles down and gets to work.

Going over what they have on Fisk is like picking one special piece of hay out of a haystack, but there's nothing else to do, so he lays all the paperwork out on the floor like they do on TV and connects the dots as best he can. The one dot he keeps circling back to, via a shell company owned by a subsidiary of a shell company, is Landman and Zack.

Of course it is.

He doesn't have the pull to request the information straight out; even in the wiggly grey area where attorney-client privilege ends and failing to report a crime begins, it's too nebulous a connection to work directly from outside the firm. Unless one happens to know an L&Z employee with an overactive, if well-disguised, conscience, and Foggy has one of those in his speed dial.

He calls Marci again, and he shows her what he has. Foggy has little to no gift for strategy, but he's glad they hooked up again before he started asking for favours- he's pretty sure she'd have done it anyway, but she's always been more inclined to listen to him after a handful of orgasms. Plus, it really was fun, and there's little enough fun in his life right now.

If it means he misses Ben's funeral when she calls with a lead- look, he feels bad about it, obviously. Ben was a good man, a good journalist, and what happened to him is terrible, but taking down the man responsible has to take precedence. (All of those things are true. That he had been dressed up in his one nice black suit for half an hour when Marci called, staring at himself in the mirror, trying to will himself to just go, already, and not talk to Matt if he doesn't want to, is also true.)

She's got great intel, too, straight out of L&Z's file room. It might not be admissible, but it's certainly damning, and worth going over in detail. She won't go through it with him, says she's in deep enough, and Karen doesn't have a law degree. He can't do it alone.

He goes to find Matt.

And it sucks, obviously it sucks. Getting an eyeful of Matt's killer biceps as he works over the heavy bag doesn't make him any less of a deceitful asshole, and it doesn't make it any easier to ask for his help, but when he does- when he says 'we', though he doesn't mean to, it just slips out like it always used to- the hopeful twist to his mouth makes Foggy's stomach do somersaults, and he can't regret it.

They go through the papers, and Karen- beautiful, brilliant Karen, who looks so happy to see them in the same room it almost hides her dark under-eye circles- spots the missing property. They do it. Even though it means more violence, more deaths, Matt suiting up again, they do it. They fucking _do it_. They lawyer the shit out of it. It's not enough to forget Matt bleeding out on that couch, but it's really good.

Too good to last.

They get a whole week of feeling smug before Wilson goddamn Fisk busts out of a federal transport vehicle and trails destruction across the city again, and Foggy finds himself standing on a street corner with Matt, sirens screaming in his ears, a cab idling at the curbside, knowing what Matt's about to do. "You can't go up against that in your black pyjamas," he says, words bitter in his mouth. He's seen Matt bleed more than anybody should bleed, and he knows, down in his gut, that Matt's going to bleed again tonight.

"I won't be," Matt says, putting his hand on Foggy's elbow. A familiar spike of heat erupts beneath the old scar on Foggy's collarbone, transfixing him to the spot. "I know I haven't earned it, but I need you to trust me, Foggy. I have to stop him."

"Go be a hero," Foggy says. He doesn't say _I do trust you_ , because Matt doesn't need to hear that right now, but goddamn it, he does. Apparently no level of insane supernatural bullshit is enough to stop him wanting to trust Matt. Matt smiles at him, a tiny, hopeful thing, and gets into the cab. "Just don't get killed doing it," he calls to Matt's retreating back, and he prays, prays, prays that Matt hears him.

**Author's Note:**

> There is more of this! I promise there is! There might even be an ending out there, somewhere, in the wild blue yonder. Come bother me about on Tumblr, where I am, as ever, [jkrockin](jkrockin.tumblr.com).


End file.
